Redirecting AppData (Yes or No?)

[Hightower]

I'm looking into how my profiles are going to work on the new network, and I have reached a fork in the road. I know RM currently redirects its AppData to My Documents\My Settings\AppData which gets it out of the profile.

 

Is this a good idea though, or a bad idea. I know there are positives and negatives to both options, but I want your opinion as a seasoned professional on which would be the better option.

 

So, please vote - leave AppData in the profile (which is roaming I might add), or redirect it off to 'My Documents\My Settings' in a similar fashion to RM.

[ZeroHour]

I wouldnt put it in a hard quota'ed area as when the user runs out of space things could get rather screwy.

I would hive it off to another UNC with a silent quota alert for you guys to keep track of the larger ones as and when it happens and find out why.

The biggest benefit is fast logon's as the appdata can get pretty huge, also windows 7 redirected app data seems to have much less issues then the xp version.

[Hightower]

I wouldnt put it in a hard quota'ed area as when the user runs out of space things could get rather screwy.

I would hive it off to another UNC with a silent quota alert for you guys to keep track of the larger ones as and when it happens and find out why.

The biggest benefit is fast logon's as the appdata can get pretty huge, also windows 7 redirected app data seems to have much less issues then the xp version.

 

Now that's something I hadn't thought of. So you'd recommend a structure as follows on the server:

 

\\servers\studentwork$\%username%

\\servers\studentprofiles$\%username%

\\servers\studentappdata$\%username%

[ZeroHour]

Now that's something I hadn't thought of. So you'd recommend a structure as follows on the server:

 

\\servers\studentwork$\%username%

\\servers\studentprofiles$\%username%

\\servers\studentappdata$\%username%

 

At my last school we used:

\\DFSROOT\profiles\staff\{username}\profile\

\\DFSROOT\profiles\staff\{username}\appdata\

[gshaw]

Get AppData away from the profile for sure, ours has it redirected inside the profile folder (why it was set up that way I'll never know but I do know I need to fix it )

 

Takes ages to logon on some machines as AppData can take up quite a chunk of space. The only thing to watch out for is the problems with Adobe software, although you can get around it by setting up permissions on the root folder to allow the Traverse folder right, which seems to fix the issue.

 

I think our new structure will be

 

\\server\profile$\username

 

\\server\user$\username\appdata

\\server\user$\username\desktop

\\server\user$\username\My Documents

 

And so on for whatever folders need to sit under the folder. I prefer to keep the profiles in a separate share.

Edited March 28, 2011 by gshaw